Unreal Tournament 3 - Free on Steam This Weekend

Ten years after the first Unreal, the Unreal series continues to be one of the biggest and most popular first-person shooters series out there. It's "Tournament" spin-offs revolutionalized the competitive PC gaming landscape, considered by many to introduce players to the "Arena FPS" sub-genre (beating Quake III Arena to the punch by mere days). In late 2007, Unreal Tournament 3 released to generally positive reviews, though its commercial success has been lagging somewhat compared to previous games in the series. Developer Epic Games released the "Titan Pack" expansion this week, featuring new content and several enhancements. In honor of the expansion pack, Valve's Steam service is offering UT3 with the Titan Pack for free this weekend to all Steam users. So if you haven't tried UT3 or any Unreal game, now is a good time to give it a go. And if you like it, it's only a mere $11.99 for the full game. For those that have played UT3, here is what the Titan Pack expansion features:

"Titan Pack" includes*:

16 environments — four Warfare, three vCTF, six Deathmatch, and three CTF maps — that are new to the PC and PS3 versions

Three bonus pack maps, CTF-Face, CTF-Searchlight and DM-Morbias

The namesake Titan mutator, which lets players overwhelm opponents as a 15 foot tall titan, or crush them as a 30 foot tall Behemoth

Greed and Betrayal, two gametypes that breed new-found fervor throughout the competitive UT3 arena

Two powerful weapons, the Stinger Turret and Eradicator Cannon artillery

Two valuable deployables, the X-Ray Field and Link Station

The Slow Field power-up, a portable version of the Slow Field deployable

Stealthbender, a new vehicle that carries two spidermine trap deployables, one EMP mine, and one each of the new Link Station and X-Ray Field deployables

By the time I finished the 8GB download (Steam's UT servers were having massive problems), the free weekend was over. I was so pissed. Maybe I'll get the download and play it a little, though that won't show me the new Titan Pack.